Your brand made it into the AI answer. Now what?

AI answer engines are fast becoming a new battleground for brand building, changing not only how consumers discover products, but which brands make it into consideration in the first place.

New research from Forrester argues that platforms such as ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Claude and Perplexity are beginning to function less like traditional search engines and more like brand-building media channels, shaping awareness, consideration and purchase intent as consumers ask them to recommend, compare and evaluate products.

This is compressing a discovery journey that once took consumers across search, social media, creator recommendations and brand websites into a single conversation - potentially narrowing their choices before they ever click through to a brand.

Don't miss: Creators cracked the algorithm. Can they crack AI search?

Forrester's "Turn AEO into brand growth" report says that today SEO alone may therefore no longer be enough. With answer engines drawing from varying sources, marketers increasingly need to think about their brands being found. Alongside being found, brands also must carefully consider how trust is being build, differentiation is occuring and purchase is being drive,

From keywords to conversations

For Google, creator of AI platform Gemini and leaders in traditional search, the clearest change is in how consumers articulate what they want. Ben King, managing director, Google Singapore, Malaysia, SEA Agency & Partners, explained that consumers are moving from short keywords towards longer, conversational searches that allow them to express intent in much greater detail.

Queries on Google's AI Mode are on average three times longer than traditional search queries. For example, instead of searching for the “best dining table”, shoppers are now specifying size, purpose and preferred design styles within the same query.

“Consumers want speed, but also the confidence of a deeply researched purchase that usually comes with time,” he said, describing AI as the “connective tissue” between inspiration and finding the right product.

King argues that this shift does not necessarily come at the expense of existing discovery channels. YouTube, he explained, remains an important product discovery engine in Southeast Asia, with creator reviews and recommendations continuing to influence purchases. AI, then, is increasingly being layered onto these behaviours.

Google's “Ask YouTube”, for example, allows viewers to ask questions about videos in real time, while upcoming conversational search capabilities can synthesise information from long-form videos and Shorts to answer more complex queries.

For brands, King said discoverability still comes back to original content, rich product information and technical accessibility. As AI advances towards what he called “agentic commerce”, the distance between discovering a product and buying will become increasingly short.

How are you turning up?

Software company Adobe's marketing director in Asia Preeti Rao says AI is significantly changing how consumers compare options, refine choices and build confidence before reaching a brand's own channels. As such, discoverability today centres on whether or not your "brand is visible, trusted and chosen in the AI-generated answers that increasingly shape consideration and choice."

For marketers, she recommended first understanding how their brands currently appear across AI platforms, which prompts matter in their categories and where competitors are gaining greater visibility.

But appearing is only the first hurdle. Rao said brands need to be clear about what they want to be known for and ensure credible information supports that positioning. She added: 

The goal is not simply to appear more often, but to be associated with the reasons that actually influence consideration and choice.

Describing AI as "another intermediary in a system" of influence that already includes journalists, creators, analysts and other third parties, Jeremy Webb, vice president and head of Social@Ogilvy, Ogilvy APAC said discovery now runs three ways.

"[This can be] straight to a person. Through another person. Or through a model that has read what those people said and repackaged it as an answer,” Webb said.

That makes the content surrounding a brand increasingly important to how it surfaces in AI-generated answers. Webb pointed to Ogilvy's Generative Impact work, which found that roughly 85% to 90% of citations in AI answers come from earned media.

“Earn the coverage,” he said. “If most citations come from editorial and trusted third parties, that is the work.”

Build on credibility

The importance of trusted sources is also reflected in how consumers respond to AI-generated answers. Aisha Speirs, executive director of international content at The Trust at The Wall Street Journal, pointed to WSJ Intelligence research which found that user trust increases fivefold when an AI summary includes a citation from a recognised publisher such as The Wall Street Journal.

The research also found that trusted citations improved brand perception among 67% of consumers, while 84% were more likely to consider purchasing from the brand.

For marketers, Speirs recommended focusing on what she called the "visibility, trust and utility" trifecta, ensuring content is easy for AI systems to understand while remaining original, useful and well sourced.

"Think like a journalist rather than trying to write for an algorithm," she said, adding that brands should also audit how conversational platforms represent them, which sources they cite and where information may be incomplete or inaccurate.

Eileen Ooi, president of PHD Asia Pacific, similarly pointed to credibility as an important part of AI discoverability.  For Ooi, brands should start by conducting a generative engine optimisation audit to understand their presence and sentiment across LLMs, before ensuring their websites, product pages and retail presence can be understood by them. She said: 

If AI can’t parse you, it can’t surface you.

Beyond technical accessibility, Ooi said marketers also need to build credibility through PR and earned media, create content across different discovery points and connect that discovery with places where consumers can act.

Yet getting surfaced does not necessarily mean getting chosen. Webb argued that when AI places competing brands alongside one another, genuine product differentiation becomes particularly important, as models can more readily draw on concrete and verifiable attributes than vague positioning.

“Vague positioning gets flattened into the category average,” he said, adding that a clear functional advantage gives a model something to cite and a reason to single a brand out.

Ultimately, Webb said brands need to create for two audiences in an AI-mediated discovery journey.

The human has to want to read it; the model has to want to cite it.

Related articles: 
Beyond the click: How marketers can score in the zero-click search era  
Gen Z leads Google Search, and they’re changing how it works    
The AI performance boom is real, but it’s trapped in search and social